RockyMtnMT
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We have been working on a secant ogive bullet since we started making bullets. We originally started the Hammer line with tangent ogive bullets because they are easier to load develop and get to shoot well. We did not want to launch our company with a high bc hard to load for bullet and get a reputation for finicky bullets. So we held off. We designed a new secant ogive bullet and did some impact testing with them and all worked very well for high vel impacts and low vel impacts (down below 1800fps). Today we went to the range with two versions. One in .277 122g for 8" twist and one in .308 195g for 9" twist. We shot the 27 cal in a 27 Nosler. Since we can't leave well enough alone we tried several different powders just to see what we could get out of this bullet. We did get them just over 3800fps but the pressure was a bit too high and the ES was too high as well. We settled on a milder load of Ramshot Magnum at a vel of 3630fps. This load shoots sub 1" at 200y. In fact the last group to zero the rifle was more like 1/2". We then went to the 195g .308. We used a 30-338 Lap imp for this test. Same story with this bullet...We can not leave well enough alone so we worked with several powders again and wound up with a nice load with RL-26 with an average vel of 3581fps. This bullet shot a very nice just under 1" group at 200y.
The kicker to this report is both test rifles shot about 25 rounds of their perspective bullet and they each held all of that load development inside a 3" group at 200y. We never made a seating depth adjustment with either rifle and on top of that we did not even check the seating depth to see how far off the lands we were. Just loaded them and went. It appears that our fears of finicky bullets with a secant ogive were unfounded. The secant ogive on our PDR design actually winds up being a hybrid ogive since the secant ogive comes into the first parabolic band has it's own radius and then becomes tangent. So essentially the PDR is what makes the Hammer Bullets so forgiving to seating depth. They simply don't care, and since the PDR reduces engraving pressure they are simply very easy to load.
Tomorrow we will be headed out to see if we can get some long range shooting in to verify the bc of each of these bullets. If my hunch is correct they will be very high for their weight. I will keep you posted.
Steve
Read more: New Hammer range test | Hammer Time
The kicker to this report is both test rifles shot about 25 rounds of their perspective bullet and they each held all of that load development inside a 3" group at 200y. We never made a seating depth adjustment with either rifle and on top of that we did not even check the seating depth to see how far off the lands we were. Just loaded them and went. It appears that our fears of finicky bullets with a secant ogive were unfounded. The secant ogive on our PDR design actually winds up being a hybrid ogive since the secant ogive comes into the first parabolic band has it's own radius and then becomes tangent. So essentially the PDR is what makes the Hammer Bullets so forgiving to seating depth. They simply don't care, and since the PDR reduces engraving pressure they are simply very easy to load.
Tomorrow we will be headed out to see if we can get some long range shooting in to verify the bc of each of these bullets. If my hunch is correct they will be very high for their weight. I will keep you posted.
Steve
Read more: New Hammer range test | Hammer Time
